"How do I look?": an ethological study of posing for the tourist photograph

Human ethology is an established approach to examining public behaviour but has rarely been used in tourism studies. It is rich in its historical contribution to studying social life, and is employed in this study to review the ways individual tourists pose for photographs at significant tourist attraction sites. An eight-part coding system was built in the study. The source material included images of 75 tourists posing for photographs at 10 international sites supported by a further broader sample of 250 images from 25 sites. The key poses identified were defined by the positioning of arms, legs, gestures, trunk, and the head. The poses were labelled bland, model, cute, composed, dynamic, interacting, projection, with a further special category entitled costumed completing the set. Fundamental questions about the origins and purposes of these poses are addressed and the potential usefulness of understanding such public behaviour for attraction site managers is briefly noted.

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CAUTHE 2016: 26th Annual Council for Australasian University Tourism and Hospitality Education Conference: the changing landscape of tourism and hospitality

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978-0-9870507-9-3

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